 CHAPTER VIII. The morning of the sixteenths was dark and gloomy. Through sheets of blinding rain we left our camp of misfortune for another camp where misfortune also awaited us. Less than half an hour took our dugots to the head of the rapids below. As Kermit had already explored the left-hand side, Colonel Rondon and Lira went down the right-hand side and found a channel which led round the worst part, so that they deemed it possible to let down the canoes by ropes from the bank. The distance to the foot of the rapids was about a kilometer. While the loads were being brought down the left bank, Louise and Antonio Correa, our two best watermen, started to take a canoe down the right side, and Colonel Rondon walked ahead to see anything he could about the river. He was accompanied by one of our three dogs, Lobo. After walking about a kilometer, he heard ahead a kind of howling noise which he thought was made by spider monkeys. He walked in the direction of the sound, and Lobo ran ahead. In a minute he heard Lobo yell with pain, and then, still yelping, came toward him, while the creature that was howling also approached evidently in pursuit. In a moment a second yell from Lobo, followed by silence, announced that he was dead, and the sound of the howling, when near, convinced Rondon that the dog had been killed by an Indian, doubtless with two arrows. Probably the Indian was howling to lure the spider monkeys toward him. Rondon fired his rifle in the air to warn off the Indian or Indians, who in all probability had never seen a civilized man, and certainly could not imagine that one was in the neighborhood. He then returned to the foot of the rapids, where the portage was still going on, and in company with Lyra, Kermit, and Antonio Parekis, the Indian, walked back to where Lobo's body lay. Sure enough he found him, slain by two arrows. One arrowhead was in him, and nearby was a strange stick used in the merry primitive method of fishing of all these Indians. Mario recognized its purpose. The Indian, who were apparently two or three in number, had fled. Some beads and trinkets were left on the spot, to show that we were not angry and were friendly. Meanwhile Cherry stayed at the head, and eye at the foot of the portage as guards. Louise and Antonio Correa brought down one canoe safely. The next was the new canoe, which was very large and heavy, being made of wood that would not float. In the rapids the rope broke, and the canoe was lost, Louise being nearly drowned. It was a very bad thing to lose the canoe, but it was even worse to lose the rope and police. This meant that it would be physically impossible to hoist big canoes up even small hills or rocky hillocks, such as had been so frequent, besides the many rapids we had encountered. It was not wise to spend the four days necessary to build new canoes, where we were, in danger of attack from the Indians. Moreover, new rapids might be very near, in which case the new canoes would hamper us. Yet the four remaining canoes would not carry all the loads and all the men, no matter how we cut the loads down, and we intended to cut everything down at once. We had been gone 18 days, we had used over a third of our food, we had gone only 125 kilometers, and it was probable that we had at least five times, perhaps six or seven times, this distance still to go. We had taken a fortnight to descend rapids, amounting in the aggregate to less than 70 yards of fall. A very few yards of fall makes a dangerous rapid when the river is swollen and swift and there are obstructions. We had only one aneroid to determine our altitude, and therefore could make merely a loose approximation to it, but we probably had between two and three times this descent in the aggregate of rapids ahead of us. So far the country had offered little in the way of food, except palm tops. We had lost four canoes and one man. We were in the country of wild Indians, who shot well with their bows. It bestowed us to go warily, but also to make all speed possible, if we were to avoid serious trouble. The best plan seemed to be to march 13 men down along the bank, while the remaining canoes, lashed two and two, floated down beside them. If after two or three days we found no bad rapids, and there seemed a reasonable chance of going some distance at decent speed, we could then build the new canoes, preferably two small ones, this time instead of one big one. We left all the baggage we could. We were already down as far as comfort would permit, but we now struck off much of the comfort. Cherry, Kermit and I had been sleeping under a very light fly, and there was another small light tent for one person, kept for possible emergencies. The last was given to me for my cot, and all five of the other swung their hammocks under the big fly. This meant that we left two big and heavy tents behind. A box of surveying instruments was also abandoned. Each of us got his personal belongings down to one box of duffel bag, although there was only a small diminution thus made, because we had so little that the only way to make a serious diminution was to restrict ourselves to the closes on our backs. The biting flies and ants were to us a source of discomfort and at times of what could fairly be called torment, but to the camaradas, most of whom went barefoot or only wore sandals, and they never did or would wear shoes, the effect was more serious. They wrapped their legs and feet in pieces of canvas or hide, and the feet of three of them became so swollen that they were crippled and could not walk any distance. The doctor, whose courage and cheerfulness never flagged, took excellent care of them. Thanks to him there had been amongst them hither to what one or two slight cases of fever. He administered to each man daily a half gram, nearly eight grains of quinine, and every third or fourth day a double dose. The following morning Colonel Rondon, Lyra, Kermit, Cherry, and nine of the camaradas started in a single file down the bank, while the doctor and I went in the two double canoes with six camaradas, three of them the invalids with swollen feet. We halted continually as we went about three times as fast as the walkers, and we traced the course of the river. After forty minutes actual going in the boats, we came to some rapids. The unloaded canoes ran them without difficulty, while the loads were portaged. In an hour and a half we were again under way, but in ten minutes came to other rapids, where the river ran among islands, and there were several big curls. The clumsy, heavily laden dugots, lashed in couples, were unwieldy and hard to handle. The rapids came just round a sharp bend, and we got caught in the upper part of the swift water, and had to run the first set of rapids in consequence. We in the leading pair of dugots were within an ace of coming to grieve on some big boulders, against which we were swept by a cross current at the turn. All of us paddling hard, scraping and bumping, we got through by the skin of our teeth, and managed to make the bank and moor our dugots. It was a narrow escape from grave disaster. The second pair of lashed dugots profited by our experience, and made the run, with risk, but with less risk, and moored beside us. Then all the loads were taken out, and the empty canoes were run down through the least dangerous channels among the islands. This was a long portage, and we camped at the foot of the rapids, having made nearly seven kilometers. Here, a little river, a rapid stream of volume equal to the Duvida, at the point where we first embarked, joined from the west. Colonel Rondon and Kermit came to it first, and the farmer named it Rio Kermit. There was an it of waterfall, about six or eight feet high, just above the junction. Here we found plenty of fish. Lira caught two paku, good-sized, deep-bodied fish. They were delicious eating. Antonio the Parekis said that these fish never came up heavy rapids, in which there were falls they had to jump. We could only hope that he was correct, as in that case the rapids we would encounter in the future would rarely be so serious as to necessitate our dragging the heavy doggots overland. Passing the rapids we had hitherto encountered had meant severe labor and some danger, but the event showed that he was mistaken. The worst rapids were ahead of us. While our course as a whole had been almost due north, and sometimes east of north, yet where there were rapids the river had generally, although not always, turned westward. This seemed to indicate that to the east of us there was a low northward projection of the central plateau across which we had traveled on muleback. This is the kind of projection that appears on the maps of this region as a Sierra. Probably it sent low spurs to the west, and the farthest point of these spurs now and then caused rapids in our course, for the rapids generally came where there were hills, and for the moment deflected the river westward from its general downhill trend to the north. There was no longer any question that the Duvida was a big river, a river of real importance. It was not a minor affluent of some other affluent, but we were still wholly in the dark as to where it came out. It was still possible, although exceedingly improbable, that it entered the Gaiparana as another river of substantially the same size near its mouth. It was much more likely, but not probable, that it entered the Tapajos. It was probable, although far from certain, that it entered the Madeira low down, near its point of junction with the Amazon. In this event it was likely, although again far from certain, that its mouth would prove to be the Aripuanan. The Aripuanan does not appear on the maps as a river of any size. On a good standard map of South America, which I had with me, its name does not appear at all, although a dotted indication of a small river or creek at about the right place probably represents it. Nevertheless, from the report of one of his loitenants, who had examined its mouth, and from the stories of the rubber-gatherers or serengueros, Colonel Rondon had come to the conclusion that this was the largest offland of the Madeira, with such a body of water that it must have a big drainage basin. He thought that the duvita was probably one of its head streams, although every existing map represented the lay of the land to be such, as to render impossible the existence of such a river system and drainage basin. The rubber-gatherers reported that they had gone many days' journey up the river, to a point where there were a series of heavy rapids, with above them the junction point of two large rivers, one entering from the west. Beyond this they had difficulties because of the hostility of the Indians, and whereas the junction point was no one could say. On the chance Colonel Rondon had directed one of his subordinate officers, Lieutenant Pirineos, to try to meet us, with boats and provisions, by ascending the Aripuanan to the point of entry of its first big offland. This was the course followed when Amil Khar had been directed to try to meet the explorers, who in 1909 came down the Gaiparana. At that time the effort was a failure, and the two parties never met, but we might have better luck, and in any event the chance was worth taking. On the morning following our camping by the mouth of the Rio Kermet, Colonel Rondon took a good deal of pains, in getting a big post set up at the entry of the smaller river into the Duvida. Then he summoned me and all the others to attend the ceremony of its erection. They found the camaradas drawn up in line, and the colonel preparing to read aloud the orders of the day. To the post was nailed a board, with Rio Kermet on it, and the colonel read the orders, reciting, that by the direction of the Brazilian government, and inasmuch as the unknown river was evidently a great river, he formally crescent it, the Rio Roosevelt. This was a complete surprise to me. Both Laura Miller and Colonel Rondon had spoken to me on the subject, and I had urged, and Kermet had urged, as strongly as possible, that the name be kept as Rioda Duvida. We felt that the river of doubt was an unusually good name, and it is always well to keep a name of this character. But my kind friends insisted otherwise, and it would have been cherished of me to object longer. I was much touched by their action and by the ceremony itself. At the conclusion of the reading, Colonel Rondon led in cheers for the United States, and then for me and for Kermet, and the camaradas cheered with a will. I proposed three cheers for Brazil, and then for Colonel Rondon and Lyra, and the doctor, and then for all the camaradas. Then Lyra said that everybody had been cheered except Cherry, and so we all gave three cheers for Cherry, and the meeting broke up in high good humor. Immediately afterward the walkers set off on their march downstream, looking for good canoe trees. In a quarter of an hour we followed with the canoes. As often as we overtook them we halted, until they had again gone a good distance ahead. They soon found fresh Indian sign, and actually heard the Indians, but the latter fled in panic. They came on a little Indian fishing village, just abandoned. The three low, oblong huts of palm leaves had each an entrance for a man, on all fours, but no other opening. They were dark inside, doubtless as the protection against the swarms of biting flies. On a pole in this village an axe, and a knife, and some strings of red beads were left, with the hope that the Indians would return, find the gifts, and realize that we were friendly. We saw further Indian sign in both sides of the river. After about two hours and a half we came on a little river, entering from the east. It was broad but shallow, and at the point of entrance rushed down, green and white, over a sharply inclined sheet of rock. It was a lovely sight, and we halted to admire it. Then on we went, until, when we had covered about eight kilometers, we came on a stretch of rapids. The canoes ran them with about a third of the loads, the other loads being carried on the men's shoulders. At the foot of the rapids we camped, as there were several good canoe trees near, and we had decided to build two rather small canoes. After dark the stars came out, but in the deep forest the glory of the stars in the night of the sky, the serene radiance of the moon, the splendor of sunrise and sunset, are never seen as they are seen on the vast open plains. The following day, the nineteenth, the men began work on the canoes. The ill-fated big canoe had been made of wood so hard, that it was difficult to work, and so heavy, that the chips sank like lead in the water. But these trees were Araputangas, with wood which was easier to work and which floated. Great buttresses or flanges jutted out from their trunks at the base, and they bore big hard nuts or fruits, which stood erect at the ends of the branches. The first tree felled proved rotten, and moreover it was chopped so that it smashed a number of lesser trees into the kitchen, overthrowing everything, but not inflicting serious damage. Hard working, willing and tough, though the camaradas were, they naturally did not have the skill of northern lumberjacks. We hoped to finish the two canoes in three days, as space was cleared in the forest for our tents. Among the taller trees grew huge-leaved Pacovas or wild bananas. We bathed and swam in the river, although in Etvikot Piranhas. Carregadores' ants swarmed all around our camp. As many of the nearest of their holes as we could, we stopped with fire, but at night some of them got into our tents and ate things we could ill-spare. In the early morning a column of foraging ants appeared, and we drove them back, also with fire. When the sky was not overcast, the sun was very hot, and we spread out everything to dry. There were many wonderful butterflies round about, but only a few birds. Yet in the early morning and late afternoon there was some attractive bird music in the woods. The two best performers were our old friend, the false bellbird, with its series of ringing whistles, and a shy, attractive ant-rush. The latter walked much on the ground, with dainty movements, curtsying and raising its tail, and in accent and sequence, although not in tone or time, its song resembled that of our white-throated sparrow. It was three weeks since we had started down the river of Daubt. We had come along its winding course about 140 kilometers, with a descent of somewhere in the neighborhood of 124 meters. It had been slow progress. We could not tell what physical obstacles were ahead of us, nor whether the Indians would be actively hostile. But the river normally described in its course a parabola, the steep descent being in the upper part, and we hoped that in the future we should not have to encounter so many and such difficult rapids as we had already encountered, and that therefore we could make better time. A hope destined to failure. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Steve Foreman. Through the Brazilian Wilderness by Theodore Roosevelt Chapter 9 Down an Unknown River into the Equatorial Forest Part 1 The mightiest river in the world is the Amazon. It runs from west to east, from sunset to the sunrise, from the Andes to the Atlantic. The mainstream flows almost along the equator, while the basin, which contains its effluence, extends many degrees north and south of the equator. The gigantic equatorial river basin is filled with an immense forest, the largest in the world, with which no other forest can be compared save those of western Africa and Malaysia. We were within the southern boundary of this great equatorial forest on a river which was not merely unknown but unguessed at, no geographer having ever suspected its existence. This river flowed northward towards the equator, but whether it would go, whether it would turn one way or another, the length of its course, where it would come out, the character of the stream itself and the character of the dwellers along its banks, all these things were yet to be discovered. One morning while the canoes were being built, Kermit and I walked a few kilometers down the river and surveyed the next rapids below. The vast, still forest was almost empty of life. We found old Indian signs. There were very few birds, these in the tops of the tall trees. We saw a recent taper-track, and under a Khazaria tree, by the bank there were tracks of capybaras which had been eating the fallen fruit. This fruit is delicious and would make a valuable addition to our orchards. The tree, although tropical, is hardy, thrives when domesticated and propagates rapidly from shoots. The Department of Agriculture should try whether it would not grow in southern California and Florida. This was the tree from which the doctor's family name was taken. His paternal grandfather, although of Portuguese blood, was an intensely patriotic Brazilian. He was a very young man when the independence of Brazil was declared, and did not wish to keep the Portuguese family name, so he changed it to that of the fine Brazilian tree in question. Such change of family names is common in Brazil. Dr. Vitale Brazil, the student of poisonous serpents, was given his name by his father, whose own family name was entirely different, and his brother's name was again different. There were tremendous downpours of rain, lasting for a couple of hours and accompanied by thunder and lightning, but on the whole it seemed as if the rains were less heavy and continuous than they had been. We all of us had to help in building the canoes now and then. Kermit, accompanied by Antonio the Priestess and Oahu, crossed the river and walked back to the little river that had entered from the east, so as to bring back a report to Colonel Rounden. Lyra took observations by the sun and by the stars. We were in about latitude eleven degrees, two minutes south, and due north of where we had started. The river had wound so that we had gone two miles for every one we made northward. Our progress had been very slow, and until we got out of the region of incessant rapids, without their attendant labor and hazard, it was not likely that we should go much faster. On the morning of March 22nd we started in our six canoes. We made ten kilometers. Twenty minutes after starting we came to the first rapids. Here everyone walked except the three best paddlers, who took the canoes down in succession, an hour's job. Soon after this we struck a bee's nest in the top of a tree overhanging the river. Our steersmen climbed out and robbed it, but alas, lost the honey on the way back. We came to a small steep fall which we did not dare run in our overlaid and clumsy and cranky dugouts. Fortunately we were able to follow a deep canal, which led off for a kilometer, returning just below the falls fifty yards from where it had started. Then, having been in the boats and in motion only one hour and a half, we came to a long stretch of rapids, which it took us six hours to descend, and we camped at the foot. Everything was taken out of the canoes, and they were run down in succession. At one difficult and perilous place they were let down by ropes, and even thus we almost lost one. We went down the right bank. On the opposite bank was an Indian village evidently inhabited only during the dry season. The marks on the stumps of trees showed that these Indians had axes and knives, and there were old fields in which maize, beans, and cotton had been grown. The forest stripped and steamed. Rubber trees were plentiful. At one point the tops of a group of tall trees were covered with yellow-white blossoms. Others bore red blossoms. Many of the big trees of different kinds were buttricid at the base with the great thin walls of wood. Others, including both palms and ordinary trees, showed an even stranger peculiarity. The trunk near the base, but sometimes six or eight feet from the ground, was split into a dozen or twenty branches or small trunks which sloped outwards in a tent-like shape, each becoming a root. The larger trees of this type looked as if their trunks were seated on the tops of the pole frames of Indian TPs. At one point in the stream, to our great surprise, we saw a flying fish. It skimmed the water like a swallow for over twenty yards. Although we made only ten kilometers, we worked hard all day. The last canoes were brought down and moored to the bank at nightfall. Our tents were pitched in the darkness. Next day we made thirteen kilometers. We ran, all told, a little over an hour and three-quarters. Seven hours were spent in getting past a series of rapids at which the portage over rocky and difficult ground was a kilometer long. The canoes were run down empty, a hazard is run, in which one of them upset. Yet while we were actually on the river, paddling and floating downstream along the stretches of swift and smooth water, it was very lovely. When we started in the morning the day was overcast and the air was heavy with vapor. Ahead of us the shrouded river stretched between dim walls of forest, half seen in the mist. Then the sun burned up the fog and loomed through it in red splendor that changed first from gold and then to molten white. In the dazzling light under the brilliant blue of the sky every detail of the magnificent forest was vivid to the eye. The great trees, the network of brush ropes, the caverns of greenery, which thick-leaved vines covered all things else. Wherever there was a hidden boulder the surface of the current was broken by waves. In one place in mid-stream a pyramidal rock thrust itself six feet above the surface of the river. On the banks we found fresh Indian sign. At home in Vermont Cherie is a farmer with a farm of six hundred acres, most of it woodland. As we sat at the foot of the rapids watching for the last dugouts with their naked paddlers to swing into sight round the bend through the white water, we talked of the northern spring that was just beginning. He sells cream, eggs, poultry, potatoes, honey, occasionally pork and veal, but at this season it was the time of the maple sugar crop. He has a sugar orchard where he taps twelve hundred trees and hopes soon to tap as many more in addition. Said Cherie, it's a busy time now for Fred Rice. Fred Rice is the hired man, and in sugar time the Cherie boys help him with enthusiasm, and moreover are paid with exact justice for the work they do. There is much wildlife about the farm, although it is near Brattleboro. One night in the early spring a bear left his tracks near the sugar house, and now and then in summer Cherie has had to sleep in the garden to keep the deer away from the beans, cabbages and beets. There was not much bird life in the forest, but Cherie kept getting species new to the collection. At this camp he shot an interesting little ant thrush. It was the size of a warbler, jet black with white under surfaces of the wings and tail, white on the tail feathers, and a large spot of white on the back, normally almost concealed, the feathers on the back being long and fluffy. When he shot the bird, a male, it was showing off before a dull-colored little bird, doubtless the female, and the chief feature of the display was this white spot on the back. The white feathers were raised and displayed so that the spot flashed like a chrysanthemum on a prong buck whose curiosity had been aroused. In the gloom of the forest the bird was hard to see, but the flashing of this patch of white feathers revealed it at once, attracting immediate attention. It was an excellent example of the coloration mark which served a purely advertising purpose. Apparently it was part of the courtship display. The bird was about thirty feet up in the branches. In the morning just before leaving this camp, a taper swam across the stream a little way above us, but unfortunately we could not get a shot at it. An ample supply of tapered beef would have meant much to us. We had started with fifty days rations, but this by no means meant full rations, in the sense of giving every man all he wanted to eat. We had two meals a day, and were on rather short commons, both our mess and the camaradas, except when we got plenty of palm tops. For our mess we had the boxes chosen by Fiala, each containing a day's rations for six men, our number. But we made each box last a day and a half, or sometimes two days, and in addition we gave some of the food to the camaradas. It was only on the rare occasions when we had killed some monkeys or a curous house or caught some fish that everybody had enough. We would have welcomed that taper. No far the game, fish, and fruit had been too scarce to be an element of weight in our food supply. In an exploring trip like ours, through a difficult and utterly unknown country, especially if densely forested, there is little time to halt, and game cannot be counted on. It is only in lands like our own west thirty years ago, like South Africa in the middle of last century, like East Africa today that game can be made the chief food supply. On this trip our only substantial food supply from the country hitherto had been that furnished by the palm tops. Two men were detailed every day to cut down the palms for food. A kilometer and a half after leaving the camp we came on a stretch of big rapids. The river here twists in loops, and we heard the roaring of these rapids the previous afternoon. Then we passed out of earshot of them, but Antonio Carrera, our best waterman, insisted all along that the roaring meant rapids worse than any we had encountered for some days. I was brought up in the water, and I know it like a fish, and all its sounds, he said. He was right. We had to carry the loads nearly a kilometer that afternoon, and the canoes were pulled out of the bank so that they might be in readiness to be dragged overland the next day. Rondon, Lyra, Kermit, and Antonio Carrera explored both sides of the rivers. On the opposite, or left bank, they found the mouth of a considerable river, bigger than the Rio Kermit, flowed in from the west and making its entrance in the middle of the rapids. This river we christened the Taune, in honor of a distinguished Brazilian and explorer, a soldier, a senator, who was also a writer of note. Kermit had with him two of his novels, and I had read one of his books dealing with a disastrous retreat from the Paraguayan War. Next morning, the twenty-fifth, the canoes were brought down. A path was chopped for them and rollers laid, and halfway down the rapids Lyra and Kermit, who were overseeing the work, as well as doing their share of the pushing and hauling, got them into a canal of smooth water which saved much severe labor. As our food supply lowered, we were constantly more desirous of economizing the strength of the men. One day more would complete a month since we had embarked on the duvita, as we had started in February, the lunar and calendar months coincided. We had used up over half our provisions. We had come only a trifle over 160 kilometers, thanks to the character and number of the rapids. We believed we had three or four times the distance yet to go before coming to a part of the river where we might hope to meet assistance, either from rubber gatherers or from Pyrenees, if he were really coming up the river which we would be going down. If the rapids continued to be as they had been, it could not be much more than three weeks before we were in straits for food, aside from the ever-present danger of accident in the rapids. And if our progress were no faster than it had been, and we were straining to do our best, we wouldn't such event still have several hundreds of kilometers of unknown river before us. We could not even hazard a guess at what was in front. The river was now a really big river, and it seemed impossible that it could flow into either the Gaiparana or the Tapajos. It was possible that it went into the Kunama, a big affluent of the Madeira low down, and next to the Tapajos. It was more probable that it was the headwaters of the Arapuana, a river which, as I have said, was not even named on the excellent English map of Brazil I carried. Nothing but the mouth had been known to any geographer. But the lower course had been known to rubber-gatherers, and recently a commission from the government of Amazonas had partway ascended one branch of it, not as far as the rubber-gatherers had gone, and, as it turns out, not the branch we came down. Two of our men were down with fever. Another man, Julio, a fellow of powerful frame, was utterly worthless, being an inborn, lazy shirk with the heart of a ferocious cur in the body of a bullock. The others were good men, some of them very good indeed. They were under the immediate supervision of Pedrinho Craverio, who was first class in every way. This camp was very lovely. It was on the edge of a bay, into which the river broadened immediately below the rapids. There was a breach of white sand where we bathed and washed our clothes. All around us and across the bay, and on both sides of the long water street made by the river, rose a splendid forest. There were flocks of parakeets, colored green, blue, and red, big two cans called overhead, lustrous green black in color with white throats, red gorgots, red and yellow-tailed covarts, and huge black and yellow bills. Here the soil was fertile, and it will be a fine sight for a coffee plantation when this region is open to settlement. Surely such a rich and fertile land cannot be permitted to remain idle, to lie as a tenantless wilderness, while there are such teeming swarms of human beings in the overcrowded, over-people countries of the world. The very rapids and waterfalls which now make the navigation of the river so difficult and dangerous would drive electric trolleys up and down its whole length, and far out onto either side, and run mills and factories, and lighten the labor on farms. With the uncoming of settlement and the steady growth of knowledge how to fight and control tropical diseases, fear of danger to health would vanish. A land like this is a hard land for the first explorers, and perhaps for their immediate followers, but not for the people who come after them. In mid-afternoon we were once more in the canoes, but we had paddled with the current only a few minutes. We had gone only a kilometer, when the roar of the rapids in front again forced us to haul up the bank. As usual, Rondon, Lyra, and Kermit, with Antonio Carrera, explored both sides while camp was being pitched. The rapids were longer and of steeper descent than the last, but on the opposite or western side there was a passage down which we thought we could get the empty dugouts at the cost of dragging them only a few yards at one spot. The loads were to be carried down the hither bank for a kilometer to the smooth water. The river foamed between great rounded masses of rock, and at one point there was a sheer fall of six or eight feet. We found in eight wild pineapples. Wild beans were in flower. At dinner we had a toucan and a couple of parrots which were very good. End of Chapter 9, Part 1 Chapter 9, Part 2 of Through the Brazillian Wilderness. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Darvinia. Through the Brazillian Wilderness by Theodore Roosevelt. Chapter 9, Down an Unknown River into the Equatorial Forest, Part 2 All next day was spent by Lyra in superintending our three best watermen as they took the canoes down the west side of the rapids, to the foot, at the spot to which the camp had meantime been shifted. In the forest some of the huge sepas, or rope-binds, which were as big as cables, bore clusters of fragrant flowers. The men found several honey-trees and fruits of various kinds, and small coconuts. They chopped down an ample number of palms for the palm-cabbage, and most important of all they gathered a quantity of big brazil nuts, which when roasted tasted like the best of chestnuts and are nutritious. And they caught a number of big piranhas, which were good eating. So we all had a feast, and everybody had enough to eat, and was happy. By these rapids, at the fall, Cherry found some strange carvings on a bare mass of rock. They were evidently made by men a long time ago. As far as is known, the Indians thereabouts make no such figures now. They were in two groups, one on the surface of the rock facing the land, the other on that facing the water. The latter were nearly obliterated. The former were in good preservation. The figures sharply cut into the rock. They consisted upon the upper flat part of the rock of four multiple circles with a dot in the middle. Oh! Very accurately made, and about a foot and a half in diameter. And below them, on the side of the rock, four multiple M's, or inverted W's. M. What these curious symbols represented, or who made them, we could not, of course, form the slightest idea. It may be that in a very remote past some Indian tribes of comparatively advanced culture had penetrated to this lovely river, just as we had now come to it. Before white men came to South America, there had already existed therein various semi-civilizations, some rude, others fairly advanced, which rose, flourished, and persisted through immemorial ages, and then vanished. The vicissitudes in the history of humanity during its stay on this southern continent have been as strange, varied, and inexplicable as paleontology shows to have been the case on the same continent in the history of the higher forms of animal life during the Age of Mammals. Colonel Rondon stated that such figures as these are not found anywhere else in Matagrosso, where he is being, and therefore it was all the more strange to find them in this one place, on the unknown river, never before visited by white men, which we were descending. Next morning we went about three kilometers before coming to some steep hills, beautiful to look upon, clad as they were in dense tall tropical forest, but ominous of new rapids. Sure enough at their foot we had to haul up and prepare for a long portage. The canoes we ran down empty. Even so we were within an ace of losing two, the last couple in which I ordinarily journeyed. In a sharp bend of the rapids between two big curls they were swept among the boulders and under the matted branches which stretched out from the bank. They filled, and the racing current pinned them where they were, one partly on the other. All of us had to help get them clear. Their fastenings were chopped asunder with axes. Kermit and half a dozen of the men stripped to the skin made their way to a small rock island in the little falls just above the canoes, and let down a rope which we tied to the outermost canoe. The rest of us, up to our armpits and barely able to keep our footing as we slipped and stumbled among the boulders in the swift current, lifted and shoved while Kermit and his men pulled the rope and fastened the slack to a half submerged tree. Each canoe in succession was hauled up the little rock island, bailed, and then taken down in safety by two paddlers. It was nearly four o'clock before we were again ready to start, having been delayed by a rainstorm so heavy that we could not see across the river. Ten minutes run took us to the head of another series of rapids. The exploring party returned with the news that we had an all day's job ahead of us, and we made camp in the rain, which did not matter much as we were already drenched through. It was impossible with the wet wood to make a fire sufficiently hot to dry all our soggy things, for the rain was still falling. A taper was seen from our boat, but as at the moment we were being whisked round in a complete circle by a whirlpool, I did not myself see it in time to shoot. Next morning we went down a kilometer, then landed on the other side of the river. The canoes were run down, and the loads carried to the other side of a little river coming in from the west. Bridge Colonel Rondon christened Cherry River. Across this we went on a bridge consisting of a huge tree felled by Macario, one of our best men. Here we camped, while Rondon, Lyra, Kermit, and Antonio Correa explored what was ahead. They were absent until mid- afternoon. Then they returned with the news that we were among ranges of low mountains, utterly different in formation from the high Plateau region to which the first rapids, those we had come to on the second of March, belonged. Through the first range of these mountains the river ran in a gorge, some three kilometers long, immediately ahead of us. The ground was so rough and steep that it would be impossible to drag the canoes over it, and difficult enough to carry the loads. And the rapids were so bad, containing several falls, one of at least ten meters in height, that it was doubtful how many of the canoes we could get down them. Kermit, who was the only man with much experience of rope work, was the only man who believed we could get the canoes down at all, and it was, of course, possible that we should have to build new ones at the foot to supply the place of any that were lost or left behind. In view of the length and character of the portage and of all the unpleasant possibilities that were ahead, and of the need of keeping every pound of food, it was necessary to reduce weight in every possible way, and to throw away everything except the barest necessities. We thought we had reduced our baggage before, but now we cut to the bone. We kept the fly for all six of us to sleep under. Kermit's shoes had gone, thanks to the amount of work in the water which he had been doing, and he took the pair I had been wearing while I put on my spare-pair. In addition to the clothes I wore, I kept one set of pajamas, a spare-pair of drawers, a spare-pair of socks, half a dozen tanker-chiefs, my wash-kit, my pocket medicine-case, and a little bag containing my spare spectacles, gun-grease, some adhesive plaster, some needles and thread, the fly-dope, and my purse and letter of credit, to be used at Maneus. All of these went into the bag containing my cot, blanket, and mosquito net. I also carried a cartridge bag containing my cartridges, head-net, and gauntlets. Kermit cut down even closer, and the others about as close. The last three days of March we spent in getting to the foot of the rapids in this gorge. Lyra and Kermit, with four of the best watermen, handled the empty canoes. The work was not only difficult and laborious in the extreme, but hazardous. For the walls of the gorge were so sheer that at the worst places they had to cling to narrow shelves on the face of the rock, while letting the canoes down with robes. Meanwhile Rondon surveyed and cut a trail for the burden-bearers, and superintended the portage of the loads. The rocky sides of the gorge were too steep for laden men to attempt to traverse them. Accordingly the trail had to go over the top of the mountain, both the ascent and the descent of the rock-strewn forest-clad slopes being very steep. It was hard work to carry loads over such a trail. From the top of the mountain, through an opening in the trees on the edge of a cliff, there was a beautiful view of the country ahead. All around and in front of us there were ranges of low mountains, about the height of the lower ridges of the Alleghenies. Their sides were steep, and they were covered with the matted growth of the tropical forest. Our next camping-place at the foot of the gorge was almost beneath us, and from thence the river ran in a straight line, flecked with white water for about a kilometer. Then it disappeared behind and between mountain ridges, which we supposed meant further rapids. It was a view well worth seeing, but, beautiful although the country ahead of us was, its character was such as to promise further hardships, difficulty and exhausting labour, and especially further delay. And delay was a serious matter to men whose food supply was beginning to run short, whose equipment was reduced to the minimum, who for a month with the utmost toil had made very slow progress, and who had no idea of either the distance or the difficulties of the route in front of them. There was not much life in the woods, big or little. Small birds were rare, although cherry's unwearyed efforts were rewarded from time to time by a species new to the collection. There were tracks of taper, deer, and agudi. And if we had taken two or three days to devote to nothing else than hunting them, we might, per chance, have killed something. But the chance was much too uncertain. The work we were doing was too hard and wearing, and the need of pressing forward altogether too great to permit us to spend any time in such manner. The hunting had to come in incidentally. This type of well-nigh impenetrable forest is the one in which it is most difficult to get even what little game exists therein. A couple of curasos and a big monkey were killed by the colonel and Kermit. On the day the monkey was brought in, Lyra, Kermit, and their four associates had spent from sunrise to sunset in severe and at moments dangerous toil among the rocks and in the swift water, and the fresh meat was appreciated. The head, feet, tail, skin, and entrails were boiled for the gaunt and ravenous dogs. The flesh gave each of us a few mouthfuls. And how good those mouthfuls tasted. Cherry, in addition to being out after birds in every spare moment, helped in all emergencies. He was a veteran in the work of the tropic wilderness. We talked together often, and of many things, for our views of life, and of a man's duty to his wife and children, to other men and to women, and to the state in peace and war, were in all essentials the same. His father had served all through the Civil War, entering an Iowa Cavalry Regiment as a private, and coming out as a captain. His breast-bone was shattered by a blow from a musket-butt, in hand to hand fighting at Shiloh. During this portage the weather favoured us. We were coming toward the close of the rainy season. On the last day of the month, when we moved camp to the foot of the gorge, there was a thunderstorm. But on the whole we were not bothered by rain until the last night, when it rained heavily, driving under the fly so as to wet my cot and bedding. However, I slept comfortably enough, rolled in the damp blanket. Without the blanket I should have been uncomfortable. A blanket is a necessity for health. On the third day Lyra and Kermit, with their daring and hard-working watermen, after wearing labour, succeeded in getting five canoes through the worst of the rapids to the chief fall. The sixth, which was frail and weak, had its bottom beaten out on the jagged rocks of the broken water. On this night, although I thought I had put my clothes out of reach, both the termites and the caregadorous ants got at them, ate holes in one boot, ate one leg of my drawers, and riddled my handkerchief. And I now had nothing to replace anything that was destroyed. Next day Lyra, Kermit, and their camaradas brought the five canoes that were left down to camp. They had in four days accomplished a work of incredible labour and of the utmost importance. For at the first glance it had seemed an absolute impossibility to avoid abandoning the canoes when we found that the river sank into a cataract-broken torrent at the bottom of a canyon-like gorge between steep mountains. On April 2nd we once more started wondering how soon we should strike other rapids in the mountains ahead, and whether in any reasonable time we should, as the aneroid indicated, be so low down that we should necessarily be in a plain where we could make a journey of at least a few days without rapids. We had been exactly a month going through an uninterrupted succession of rapids. During that month we had come only about a hundred and ten kilometres, and had descended nearly one hundred and fifty metres. The figures are approximate, but fairly accurate. We had lost four of the canoes with which we started, and one other which we had built, and the life of one man, and the life of a dog which by its death had in all probability saved the life of Colonel Rondon. In a straight line northward toward our supposed destination we had not made more than a mile and a quarter a day, at the cost of bitter toil for most of the party, of much risk for some of the party, and of some risk and some hardship for all the party. Most of the camaradas were downhearted, naturally enough, and occasionally asked one of us if we really believed that we should ever get out alive, and we had to cheer them up as best we could. There was no change in our work for the time being. We made but three kilometres that day. Most of the party walked all the time, but the dugouts carried the luggage until we struck the head of the series of rapids which were to take up the next two or three days. The river rushed through a wild gorge, a chasm, or canyon, between two mountains. Its sides were very steep, mere rock walls, although in most places so covered with the luxuriant growth of the trees and bushes that clung in the crevices, and with green moss, that the naked rock was hardly seen. Rondon, Lyra, and Kermit, who were in front, found a small level spot, with a beach of sand, and sent backward to camp there, while they spent several hours in exploring the country ahead. The canoes were run down empty, and the loads carried painfully along the face of the cliffs. So bad was the trail that I found it rather hard to follow, although carrying nothing but my rifle and cartridge bag. The explorers returned with the information that the mountains stretched ahead of us, and that there were rapids as far as they had gone. We could only hope that the aneroid was not hopelessly out of kilter, and that we should, therefore, fairly soon find ourselves in comparatively level country. The severe toil on a rather limited food supply was telling on the strength as well as on the spirits of the men. Lyra and Kermit, in addition to their other work, performed as much actual physical labour as any of them. CHAPTER IX. Next day, the third of April, we began the descent of these sinister rapids of the chasm. Colonel Rondon had gone to the summit of the mountain in order to find a better trail for the burden-bearers, but it was hopeless, and they had to go along the face of the cliffs. Such an exploring expedition as that in which we were engaged of necessity involves hard and dangerous labour, and perils of many kinds. To follow downstream an unknown river, broken by innumerable cataracts and rapids, rushing through mountains, of which the existence has never been even guessed, bears no resemblance whatever to following even a fairly dangerous river which has been thoroughly explored, and has become, in some sort, a highway, so that experienced pilots can be secured as guides, while the portages have been pioneered, and trails chopped out, and every dangerous feature of the rapids is known beforehand. In this case no one could foretell that the river would cleave its way through steep mountain chains, cutting narrow cliffs in which the cliff walls rose almost sheer on either hand. When a rushing river thus canyons, as we used to say out west, and the mountains are very steep it becomes almost impossible to bring the canoes down the river itself, and utterly impossible to portage them along the cliff sides, while even to bring the loads over the mountain is a task of extraordinary labour and difficulty. Moreover, no one can tell how many times the task will have to be repeated, or when it will end, or whether the food will hold out. Every hour of work in the rapids is fraught with the possibility of the gravest disaster, and yet it is imperatively necessary to attempt it, and all this is done in an uninhabited wilderness, or else a wilderness tenanted only by unfriendly savages, where failure to get through means death by disease and starvation. Wholesale disasters to South American exploring parties have been frequent. The first recent effort to descend one of the unknown rivers to the Amazon from the Brazilian highlands resulted in such a disaster. It was undertaken in 1889 by a party about as large as ours under a Brazilian engineer officer, Colonel Talish Perish. In descending some rapids they lost everything, canoes, food, medicine, implements, everything. Fever smote them and then starvation. All of them died except one officer and two men, who were rescued months later. Recently, in Guiana, a wilderness veteran, Andre, lost two-thirds of his party by starvation. Genuine wilderness exploration is as dangerous as warfare. The conquest of wild nature demands the utmost vigour, hardy-hood, and daring, and takes from the conquerors a heavy toll of life and health. Lyra, Kermit, and Cherry, with four of the men, worked the canoes halfway down the canyon. Again and again it was touch and go whether they could get by a given point. At one spot the Channel of the Furious Torrent was only fifteen yards across. One canoe was lost, so that of the seven with which we had started, only two were left. Cherry laboured with the other men at times, and also stood as guard over them, for while actually working, of course, no one could carry a rifle. Kermit's experience in bridge-building was invaluable in enabling him to do the rope work, by which alone it was possible to get the canoes down the canyon. He and Lyra had now been in the water for days. Their clothes were never dry, their shoes were rotten, the bruises on their feet and legs had become sores. On their bodies some of the insect bites had become festering wounds, as indeed was the case with all of us. Poisonous ants, biting flies, ticks, wasps, bees, were a perpetual torment. However no one had yet been bitten by a venomous serpent, a scorpion, or a centipede, although we had killed all of the three within camp limits. Under such conditions whatever is evil in men's nature comes to the front. On this day a strange and terrible tragedy occurred. One of the camaradas, a man of pure European blood, was the man named Julio, of whom I have already spoken. He was a very powerful fellow, and had been importunately eager to come on the expedition, and he had the reputation of being a good worker. But, like so many men of higher standing, he had had no idea of what such an expedition really meant. And under the strain of toil, hardship, and danger his nature showed its true depths of selfishness, cowardice, and ferocity. He shirked all work, he shamed sickness. Nothing could make him do his share. And yet, unlike his self-respecting fellows, he was always shamelessly begging for favours. Kermit was the only one of our party who smoked, and he was continually giving a little tobacco to some of the camaradas, who worked especially well under him. The good men did not ask for it, but Julio, who shirked every labour, was always, and always in vain, demanding it. Colonel Rondon, Lyra, and Kermit each tried to get work out of him, and in order to do anything with him, had to threaten to leave him in the wilderness. He threw all his tasks on his comrades, and, moreover, he stole their food as well as ours. On such an expedition the theft of food comes next to murder as a crime, and should, by rights, be punished as such. We could not trust him to cut down palms or gather nuts, because he would stay out and eat what ought to have gone into the common store. Finally the men on several occasions themselves detected him stealing their food. Alone of the whole party, and thanks to the stolen food, he had kept in full flesh and bodily vigour. One of our best men was a huge negro named Paichon, a corporal and acting sergeant in the engineer corps. He had, by the way, literally torn his trousers to pieces so that he wore only the tatters of a pair of old drawers, until I gave him my spare trousers when we lightened loads. He was a stern disciplinarian. One evening he detected Julio stealing food, and smashed him in the mouth. Julio came crying to us, his face working with fear and malignant hatred, but after investigation he was told that he had gotten off uncommonly, lightly. The men had three or four carbines, which were sometimes carried by those who were not their owners. On this morning at the outset of the portage, Pedrinho discovered Julio stealing some of the men's dried meat. Shortly afterward Paichon rebuked him for, as usual, lagging behind. By this time we had reached the place where the canoes were tied to the bank, and then taken down one at a time. We were sitting down, waiting for the last loads to be brought along the trail. Pedrinho was still in the camp we had left. Paichon had just brought in a load, left it on the ground with his carbine beside it, and returned on the trail for another load. Julio came in, put down his load, picked up the carbine, and walked back on the trail, muttering to himself, but showing no excitement. We thought nothing of it, for he was always muttering, and occasionally one of the men saw a monkey or big bird and tried to shoot it, so it was never surprising to see a man with a carbine. In a minute we heard a shot, and in a short time three or four of the men came up the trail to tell us that Paichon was dead, having been shot by Julio who had fled into the woods. Colonel Rondon and Lyra were ahead. I sent a messenger for them, directed Cherry and Kermit to stay where they were and guard the canoes and provisions, and started down the trail with the doctor, an absolutely cool and plucky man, with a revolver but no rifle, and a couple of the camaradas. We soon passed the dead body of poor Paichon. He lay in a huddle, in a pool of his own blood, where he had fallen, shot through the heart. I feared that Julio had run amok, and intended merely to take more lives before he died, and that he would begin with Pedrinho, who was alone and unarmed, in the camp we had left. Accordingly I pushed on, followed by my companions, looking sharply right and left, but when we came to the camp, the doctor quietly walked by me remarking, my eyes are better than yours, Colonel, if he is in sight I'll point him out to you as you have the rifle. However he was not there, and the others soon joined us with the welcome news that they had found the carbine. The murderer had stood to one side of the path and killed his victim, when a dozen paces off, with deliberate and malignant purpose. Then evidently his murderous hatred had at once given way to his innate cowardice, and perhaps hearing someone coming along the path, he fled in panic terror into the wilderness. A tree had knocked the carbine from his hand. His footsteps showed that after going some rods he had started to return, doubtless for the carbine, but had fled again, probably because the body had then been discovered. It was questionable whether or not he would live to reach the Indian villages, which were probably his goal. He was not a man to feel remorse, never a common feeling, but surely that murderer was in a living hell, as with fever and famine leering at him from the shadows, he made his way through the empty desolation of the wilderness. Franca, the cook, quoted out of the melancholy proverbial philosophy of the people, the proverb, no man knows the heart of any one, and then expressed with deep conviction a weird ghostly belief I had never encountered before. Paixon is following Julio now, and will follow him until he dies. Paixon fell forward on his hands and knees, and when a murdered man falls like that, his ghost will follow the slayer as long as the slayer lives. We did not attempt to pursue the murderer. We could not legally put him to death, although he was a soldier who in cold blood had just deliberately killed a fellow soldier. If we had been near civilization we would have done our best to bring him in and turn him over to justice. But we were in the wilderness, and how many weeks' journey were ahead of us we could not tell. Our food was running low, sickness was beginning to appear among the men, and both their courage and their strength were gradually ebbing. Our first duty was to save the lives and the health of the men of the expedition who had honestly been performing, and had still to perform, so much perilous labour. If we brought the murderer in he would have to be guarded night and day on an expedition where there were always loaded firearms about, and where there would continually be opportunity and temptation for him to make an effort to seize food and a weapon and escape, perhaps murdering some other good man. He could not be shackled while climbing along the cliff's slopes. He could not be shackled in the canoes, where there was always chance of upset and drowning. And standing guard would be an additional and severe penalty on the weary, honest men already exhausted by overwork. The expedition was in peril, and it was wise to take every chance possible that would help secure success. Whether the murderer lived or died in the wilderness was of no moment compared with the duty of doing everything to secure the safety of the rest of the party. For the two days following we were always on the watch against his return, for he could have readily killed someone else by rolling rocks down on any one of the men working on the cliff-sides or in the bottom of the gorge. But we did not see him until the morning of the third day. We had passed the last of the rapids of the chasm, and the four boats were going downstream when he appeared behind some trees on the bank, and called out that he wished to surrender and be taken aboard. For the murderer was an errant craven at heart. A strange mixture of ferocity and cowardice. Colonel Rondon's boat was far in advance. He did not stop nor answer. I kept on in similar fashion with the rear boats, for I had no intention of taking the murderer aboard to the jeopardy of the other members of the party, unless Colonel Rondon told me that it would have to be done in pursuance of his duty as an officer of the army and a servant of the Government of Brazil. At the first halt Colonel Rondon came up to me and told me that this was his view of his duty, but that he had not stopped because he wished first to consult me as the Chief of the Expedition. I answered that for the reasons enumerated above I did not believe that in justice to the good men of the Expedition we should jeopardize their safety by taking the murderer along, and that if the responsibility were mine I should refuse to take him. But that he, Colonel Rondon, was the superior officer of both the murderer and of all the other enlisted men and army officers on the expedition, and in return was responsible for his actions to his own governmental superiors, and to the laws of Brazil, and that in view of this responsibility he must act as his sense of duty bade him. Accordingly at the next camp he sent back two men, expert woodsmen, to find the murderer and bring him in. They failed to find him. Note. The above account of all the circumstances connected with the murderer was read to and approved as correct by all six members of the expedition. I have anticipated my narrative because I do not wish to recur to the horror more than is necessary. I now return to my story. After we found that Júlio had fled, we returned to the scene of the tragedy. The murdered man lay with a handkerchief thrown over his face. We buried him beside the place where he fell. With axes and knives the camaradas dug a shallow grave while we stood by with bared heads. Then reverently and carefully we lifted the poor body which but half an hour before had been so full of vigorous life. Colonel Rondon and I bore the head and shoulders. We laid him in the grave and heaped a mound over him and put a rude cross at his head. We fired a volley for a brave and loyal soldier who had died doing his duty. Then we left him forever under the great trees beside the lonely river. That day we got only half way down the rapids. There was no good place to camp, but at the foot of one steep cliff there was a narrow boulder-covered slope where it was possible to sling hammocks and cook, and a slanting spot was found for my cot, which had sagged until by this time it looked like a broken-backed centipede. It rained a little during the night, but not enough to wet us much. Next day Lyra, Kermit, and Cherry finished their job and brought the four remaining canoes to camp, one leaking badly from the battering on the rocks. We then went downstream a few hundred yards, and camped on the opposite side. It was not a good camping-place, but it was better than the one we left. The men were growing constantly weaker under the endless strain of exhausting labour. Kermit was having an attack of fever, and Lyra and Cherry had touches of dysentery, but all three continued to work. While in the water, trying to help with an upset canoe, I had, by my own clumsiness, bruised my leg against a boulder, and the resulting inflammation was somewhat bothersome. I now had a sharp attack of fever, but thanks to the excellent care of the doctor, was over it in about forty-eight hours. But Kermit's fever grew worse, and he too was unable to work for a day or two. We could walk over the portages, however. A good doctor is an absolute necessity on an exploring expedition, in such a country as that we were in, under penalty of a frightful mortality among the members. And the necessary risks and hazards are so great, the chances of disaster so large, that there is no warrant for increasing them by the failure to take all feasible precautions. End of Chapter 9, Part 3. Chapter 9, Part 4 of Through the Brazilian Wilderness. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Darvinia. Through the Brazilian Wilderness by Theodore Roosevelt. Chapter 9. Down an Unknown River Into the Equatorial Forest. Part 4. The next day we made another long portage round some rapids and camped at night still in the hot, wet, sunless atmosphere of the gorge. The following day, April 6th, we portaged past another set of rapids which proved to be the last of the rapids of the chasm. For some kilometres we kept passing hills and feared lest any moment we might again find ourselves fronting another mountain gorge, with, in such case, further days of grinding and perilous labour ahead of us, while our men were disheartened, weak, and sick. Most of them had already begun to have fever, their condition was inevitable after over a month's uninterrupted work of the hardest kind in getting through the long series of rapids we had just passed, and a long further delay, accompanied by wearing labour, would have almost certainly meant that the weakest among our party would have begun to die. There were already two of the camaradas who were too weak to help the others, their condition being such as to cause us serious concern. However, the hills gradually sank into a level plain, and the river carried us through it at a rate that enabled us during the remainder of the day to reel off thirty-six kilometres, a record that for the first time held out promise. Twice tapers swam the river while we passed, but not near my canoe. However, the previous evening, Cherry had killed two monkeys and Kermit won, and we all had a few mouthfuls of fresh meat. We had already had a good soup made out of a turtle Kermit had caught. We had to portage by one short set of rapids, the unloaded canoes being brought down without difficulty. At last, at four in the afternoon, we came to the mouth of a big river running in from the right. We thought it was probably the Ananas, but of course could not be certain. It was less in volume than the one we had descended, but nearly as broad. It's breadth at this point being ninety-five yards as against one hundred and twenty for the larger river. There were rapids ahead, immediately after the junction, which took place in latitude ten degrees, fifty-eight minutes south. We had come two hundred and sixteen kilometres all told, and were nearly north of where we had started. We camped on the point of land between the two rivers. It was extraordinary to realise that here, about the eleventh degree, we were on such a big river, utterly unknown to the cartographers, and not indicated by even a hint on any map. We named this big tributary Rio Cardoso after a gallant officer of the commission who had died of Berry Berry just as our expedition began. We spent a day at this spot, determining our exact position by the sun, and afterward by the stars, and sending on two men to explore the rapids in advance. They returned with the news that there were big cataracts in them, and that they would form an obstacle to our progress. They had also caught a huge illuroid fish, which furnished an excellent meal for everybody in camp. This evening at sunset the view across the broad river from our camp, where the two rivers joined, was very lovely. And for the first time we had an open space in front of and above us, so that after nightfall the stars and the great waxing moon were glorious overhead, and against the rocks in midstream the broken water gleamed like tossing silver. The huge catfish which the men had caught was over three feet and a half long, with the usual enormous head, out of all proportions to the body, and the enormous mouth, out of all proportion to the head. Such fish, although their teeth are small, swallow very large prey. This one contained the nearly digested remains of a monkey. Probably the monkey had been seized while drinking from the end of a branch, and once engulfed in that yawning cavern there was no escape. We Americans were astounded at the idea of a catfish making prey of a monkey. But our Brazilian friends told us that in the lower Madeira, and the part of the Amazon near its mouth, there is a still more gigantic catfish, which in similar fashion occasionally makes prey of man. This is a grayish whitefish over nine feet long, with the usual disproportionately large head and gaping mouth, with a circle of small teeth. For the engulfing mouth itself is the danger, not the teeth. It is called the Piraíba, pronounced in four syllables. While stationed at the small city of Itaquachiarra on the Amazon, at the mouth of the Madeira, the doctor had seen one of these monsters which had been killed by the two men it had attacked. They were fishing in a canoe when it rose from the bottom, for it is a ground fish, and raising itself half out of the water lunged over the edge of the canoe at them, with open mouth. They killed it with their falcons, as machetes are called in Brazil. It was taken round the city in triumph in an ox cart. The doctor saw it, and said it was three metres long. He said that swimmers feared it even more than the big caiman, because they could see the latter, whereas the former lay hid at the bottom of the water. Colonel Rondon said that in many villages where he had been on the lower Madeira, the people had built stockaded enclosures in the water, in which they bathed, not venturing to swim in the open water for fear of the Piraíba and the big caiman. Next day, April 8th, we made five kilometres only, as there was a succession of rapids. We had to carry the loads past two of them, but ran the canoes without difficulty, for on the west side were long canals of swift water through the forest. The river had been higher, but was still very high, and the current raced round the many islands, that at this point divided the channel. At four we made camp at the head of another stretch of rapids, over which the Canadian canoes would have danced without shipping a teaspoonful of water, but which our dugouts could only run empty. Cherry killed three monkeys, and Lira caught two big piranhas, so that we were again all of us well provided with dinner and breakfast. When a number of men doing hard work are most of the time on half rations, they grow to take a lively interest in any reasonably full meal that does arrive. On the tenth we repeated the proceedings, a short quick run, a few hundred metres portage, occupying however at least a couple of hours, again a few minutes run. Again other rapids. We again made less than five kilometres. In the two days we had been descending nearly a metre for every kilometre we made in advance, and it hardly seemed as if this state of things could last, for the aneroid showed that we were getting very low down. How I longed for a big main birch bark, such as that in which I once went down the Matawamkeag at high water. It would have slipped down these rapids as a girl trips through a country dance. But our loaded dugouts would have shoved their noses under every curl. The country was lovely. The wide river, now in one channel, now in several channels, wound among hills. The shower-freshened forest glistened in the sunlight. The many kinds of beautiful palm-fronds and the huge picova-leaves stamped the peculiar look of the tropics on the whole landscape. It was like passing by water through a gigantic botanical garden. In the afternoon we got an elderly toucan, a piranha, and a reasonably edible side-necked river turtle, so we had fresh meat again. We slept, as usual, in earshot of rapids. We had been out six weeks, and almost all the time we had been engaged in wearily working our own way down and past rapid after rapid. Rapids are by far the most dangerous enemies of explorers and travellers who journey along these rivers. Next day was a repetition of the same work. All the morning was spent in getting the loads to the foot of the rapids, at the head of which we were encamped, down which the canoes were run empty. Then for thirty or forty minutes we ran down the swift, twisting river, the two lashed canoes almost coming to grief at one spot, where a swirl of the current threw them against some trees on a small submerged island. Then we came to another set of rapids, carried the baggage down past them, and made camp long after dark in the rain. A good exercise in patience for those of us who were still suffering somewhat from fever. No one was in really buoyant health. For some weeks we had been sharing part of the contents of our boxes with the camaradas, but our food was not very satisfying to them. They needed quantity, and the main stay of each of their meals was a mass of palmitas. But on this day they had no time to cut down palms. We finally decided to run these rapids with the empty canoes, and they came down in safety. On such a trip it is highly undesirable to take any save necessary risks, for the consequences of disaster are too serious. And yet if no risks are taken the progress is so slow that disaster comes anyhow, and it is necessary perpetually to vary the terms of the perpetual working compromise between rashness and overcaution. This night we had a very good fish to eat, a big silvery fellow called a pescada, of a kind we had not caught before. One day Trigueiro failed to embark with the rest of us, and we had to camp where we were next day to find him. Easter Sunday we spent in the fashion with which we were altogether too familiar. We only ran in a clear course for ten minutes, all told, and spent eight hours in portaging the loads past rapids down which the canoes were run. The balsa was almost swamped. This day we caught twenty-eight big fish, mostly piranhas, and everybody had all he could eat for dinner and for breakfast the following morning. The forenoon of the following day was a repetition of this weary some work, but late in the afternoon the river began to run in long, quiet reaches. We made fifteen kilometres, and for the first time in several weeks camped where we did not hear the rapids. The silence was soothing and restful. The following day, April fourteenth, we made a good run of some thirty-two kilometres. We passed a little river which entered on our left. We ran two or three light rapids and portaged the loads by another. The river ran in long and usually tranquil stretches. In the morning when we started the view was lovely. There was a mist, and for a couple of miles the great river, broad and quiet, ran between the high walls of tropical forest, the tops of the giant trees showing dim through the haze. Different members of the party caught many fish, and shot a monkey, and a couple of jakare-tinga birds, kin to a turkey, but the size of a fowl, so we again had a camp of plenty. The dry season was approaching, but there were still heavy drenching rains. On this day the men found some new nuts of which they liked the taste, but the nuts proved unwholesome, and half of the men were very sick and unable to work the following day. In the balsa only two were left fit to do anything, and Kermit plied a paddle all day long. Accordingly it was a rather sorry crew that embarked the following morning, April 15th, but it turned out a red-letter day. The day before we had come across cuttings, a year old, which were probably, but not certainly, made by pioneer rubbermen. But on this day, during which we made twenty-five kilometres, after running two hours and a half, we found on the left bank a board on a post, with the initials J.A., to show the farthest up-point which a rubberman had reached and claimed as his own. An hour further down we came on a newly built house in a little planted clearing, and we cheered heartily. No one was at home, but the house of Palm Thatch was clean and cool. A couple of dogs were on watch, and the belongings showed that a man, a woman, and a child lived there, and had only just left. Another hour brought us to a similar house, where dwelt an old black man who showed the innate courtesy of the Brazilian peasant. We came on these rubbermen and their houses, in about latitude ten degrees twenty-four minutes. In mid-afternoon we stopped at another clean, cool, picturesque house of Palm Thatch. The inhabitants all fled at our approach, fearing an Indian raid, for they were absolutely unprepared to have any one come from the unknown region's upstream. They returned, and were most hospitable and communicative. And we spent the night there. Said Antonio Correa to Kermit. It seems like a dream to be in a house again, and hear the voices of men and women, instead of being among those mountains and rapids. The river was known to them as the Castaño, and was the main affluent, or rather the left, or western branch, of the Arripuana. The Castaño is a name used by the rubber-gatherers only. It is unknown to the geographers. We were, according to our informants, about fifteen days' journey from the confluence of the two rivers. But there were many rubbermen along the banks, some of whom had become permanent settlers. We had come over three hundred kilometers, in forty-eight days, over absolutely unknown ground. We had seen no human being, although we had twice heard Indians. Six weeks had been spent in steadily slogging our way down through the interminable series of rapids. It was astonishing before, when we were on a river of about the size of the upper Rhine, or Elbe, to realize that no geographer had any idea of its existence. But, after all, no civilized man of any grade had ever been on it. Here, however, was a river with people dwelling along the banks, some of whom had lived in the neighborhood for eight or ten years, and yet on no standard map was there a hint of the river's existence. We were putting on the map a river running through between five and six degrees of latitude, of between seven and eight, if, as should properly be done, the lower Arripuana is included as part of it, of which no geographer, in any map published in Europe or the United States or Brazil, had even admitted the possibility of the existence. For the place actually occupied by it was filled on the maps by other imaginary streams, or by mountain ranges. Before we started, the Amazonas Boundary Commission had come up the lower Arripuana and then the eastern branch, or upper Arripuana, to eight degrees forty-eight minutes, following the course which for a couple of decades had been followed by the Rubberman, but not going as high. An employee, either of this commission or of one of the big Rubbermen, had been up the Castaño, which is easy of ascent in its lower course, to about the same latitude, not going nearly as high as the Rubbermen had gone. This we found out while we ourselves were descending the lower Castaño. The lower mainstream and the lower portion of its main affluent, the Castaño had been commercial highways for Rubbermen and settlers, for nearly two decades. And as we speedily found, were as easy to traverse as the upper stream which we had just come down was difficult to traverse, but the governmental and scientific authorities, native and foreign, remained in complete ignorance, and the Rubbermen themselves had not the slightest idea of the headwaters, which were in country never hitherto traversed by civilized men. Evidently the Castaño was, in length, at least substantially equal, and probably superior, to the upper Arripuana. It now seemed even more likely that the Ananas was the headwaters of the mainstream than of the Cardozo. For the first time this great river, the greatest affluent of the Madeira, was to be put on the map, and the understanding of its real position and real relationship, and the clearing up of the complex problem of the sources of all these lower right-hand affluence of the Madeira, was rendered possible by the seven weeks of hard and dangerous labour we had spent in going down an absolutely unknown river, through an absolutely unknown wilderness. At this stage of the growth of world geography, I esteemed it a great piece of good fortune to be able to take part in such a feat. A feat which represented the capping of the pyramid which, during the previous seven years, had been built by the labour of the Brazilian Telegraphic Commission. We had passed the period when there was a chance of peril, of disaster, to the whole expedition. There might be risk ahead to individuals and some difficulties and annoyances for all of us, but there was no longer the least likelihood of any disaster to the expedition as a whole. We now no longer had to face continual anxiety, the need of constant economy with food, the duty of labour with no end in sight, and bitter uncertainty as to the future. It was time to get out. The wearing work under very unhealthy conditions was beginning to tell on everyone. Half of the camaradas had been down with fever and were much weakened. Only a few of them retained their original physical and moral strength. Cherry and Kermit had recovered, but both Kermit and Lyra still had bad sores on their legs from the bruises received in the water work. I was in worse shape. The after-effects of the fever still hung on, and the leg which had been hurt while working in the rapids with the sunken canoe had taken a turn for the bad and developed an abscess. The good doctor, to whose unwearyed care and kindness I owe much, had cut it open and inserted a drainage tube, an added charm being given the operation and the subsequent dressings, by the enthusiasm with which the pionche and bohashudish took part therein. I could hardly hobble and was pretty well laid up, but there aren't no stop-conductor while a battery's charging ground. No man has any business to go on such a trip as ours unless he will refuse to jeopardize the welfare of his associates by any delay caused by a weakness or ailment of his. It is his duty to go forward if necessary on all fours until he drops. Fortunately I was put to no such test. I remained in good shape until we had passed the last of the rapids of the chasms. When my serious trouble came we had only canoe-riding ahead of us. It is not ideal for a sick man to spend the hottest hours of the day stretched on the boxes in the bottom of a small open dugout under the well-nigh intolerable heat of the torrid sun of the mid-tropics, varied by blinding, drenching downpours of rain, but I could not be sufficiently grateful for the chans. Kermit and Cherry took care of me as if they had been trained nurses, and Colonel Rondon and Lyra were no less thoughtful. The North was calling strongly to the three men of the North. Rocky Dell farmed to Cherry, Sagamore Hill to me, and to Kermit the call was stronger still. After nightfall we could now see the dipper well above the horizon, upside down with the two pointers pointing to a North star below the world's rim, but the dipper with all its stars. In our home country spring had now come, the wonderful northern spring of long glorious days, of brooding twilights, of cool delightful nights. Robin and Bluebird, Meadowlark and Song-sparrow were singing in the mornings at home. The maple buds were red, windflowers and blood-root were blooming while the last patches of snow still lingered. The rapture of the hermit-thrush in Vermont, the serene golden melody of the wood-thrush on Long Island, would be heard before we were there to listen. Each man to his home and to his true love. Each was longing for the homely things that were so dear to him, for the home-people who were dearer still, and for the one who was dearest of all. 1. Our adventures and our troubles were like over. We now experienced the incalculable contrast between descending a known and traveled river, and one that is utterly unknown. After four days we hired a rubberman to go with us as guide. We knew exactly what channels were passable when we came to the rapids, when the canoes had to unload, and where the carry trails were. It was all child's play compared to what we had gone through. We had made long days journeys, for at night we stopped at some palm-thatched house, inhabited or abandoned, and therefore the men were spared the labor of making camp. And we bought ample food for them so there was no further need of fishing and chopping down palms for the palm-tops. The heat of the sun was blazing, but it looked as if we had come back into the rainy season, for there were many heavy rains, usually in the afternoon, but sometimes in the morning or at night. The mosquitoes were sometimes rather troublesome at night. In the daytime the pee-ums swarmed, and often bothered us even when we were in mid-stream. For four days there were no rapids we could not run without unloading. Then on the nineteenth we got a canoe from Senor Barboso. He was a most kind and hospitable man, who also gave us a duck and a chicken, and some mandiak, and six pounds of rice, and would take no payment. He lived in a roomy house with his dusky cigar-smoking wife and his many children. The new canoe was light and roomy, and we were able to rig up a low shelter under which I could lie. I was still sick. At noon we passed the mouth of a big river, the Rio Branco, coming in from the left. This was about in latitude nine degrees thirty-eight minutes. Soon afterward we came to the first serious rapids, the Panela. We carried the boats past, ran down the empty canoes, and camped at the foot in a roomy house. The doctor bought a handsome trumpeter bird, very friendly and confiding, which was then's fourth my canoe companion. We had already passed many inhabited and still a larger number of uninhabited houses. The dwellers were rubbermen, but generally they were permanent settlers also, homemakers with their wives and children. Some, both of the men and women, were apparently of pure Negro blood, or of pure Indian, or South European blood. But in the great majority, all three strains were mixed in varying degrees. They were most friendly, courteous, and hospitable. Often they refused payment for what they could afford out of their little to give us. When they did charge the prices were very high, as was but just, for they lived back of the beyond, and everything cost them fabulously, save what they raised themselves. The cool bear houses of poles and palm thatch contained little, except hammocks and a few simple cooking utensils, and often a clock, or sewing machine, or winchester rifle from our own country. They often had flowers planted, including fragrant roses. Their only livestock except the dogs were a few chickens and ducks. They planted patches of mandioc, maize, sugarcane, rice, beans, squashes, pineapples, bananas, lemons, oranges, melons, peppers, and various purely native fruits and vegetables, such as the knyabo, a vegetable fruit growing on the branches of a high bush which is cooked with meat. They get some game from the forest and more fish from the river. There is no representative of the government among them. Indeed, even now their very existence is barely known to the governmental authorities, and the church has ignored them as completely as the state. When they wish to get married, they have to spend several months getting down to and back from Manaus or some smaller city, and usually the first christening and the marriage ceremony are held at the same time. They have merely squatters rights to the land, and are always in danger of being ousted by unscrupulous big men who come in late, but with the title technically straight. The land laws should be shaped so as to give each of these pioneer settlers the land he actually takes up and cultivates, and upon which he makes his home. The small homemaker who owns the land which he tills with his own hands is the greatest element of strength in any country. These are real pioneer settlers. They are the true wilderness winners. No continent is ever really conquered or thoroughly explored by a few leaders or exceptional men, although such men can render great service. The real conquest, the thorough exploration and settlement, is made by a nameless multitude of small men of whom the most important are, of course, the homemakers. Each treads most of the time in the footsteps of his predecessors, but for some few miles, at some time or other, he breaks new ground, and his house is built where no house has ever stood before. Such a man, the real pioneer, must have no strong desire for social life, and no need, probably no knowledge of any luxury or of any comfort, save of the most elementary kind. The pioneer who is always longing for the comfort and luxury of civilization, and especially of great cities, is no real pioneer at all. These settlers whom we met were contented to live in the wilderness. They had found the climate healthy and the soil fruitful. A visit to a city was a very rare event, nor was there any overwhelming desire for it. In short, these men, and those like them everywhere on the frontier between civilization and savagery in Brazil, are now playing the part played by our back woodsman, when over a century and a quarter ago they began the conquest of the Great Basin of the Mississippi, the part played by the Boer farmers for over a century in South Africa, and by the Canadians, when less than half a century ago they began to take possession of their Northwest. Every now and then, someone says that the last frontier is now to be found in Canada or Africa, and that it is almost vanished. On a far larger scale, this frontier is to be found in Brazil, a country as big as Europe or the United States, and decades will pass before it vanishes. The first settlers came to Brazil a century before the first settlers came to the United States and Canada. For 300 years, progress was very slow. Portuguese colonial government at that time was almost as bad as Spanish. For the last half century and over, there has been a steady increase in the rapidity of the rate of development, and this increase bids fair to be constantly more rapid in the future. The Paulistas, hunting for lands, slaves and mines, were the first native Brazilians who a few hundred years ago played a great part in opening to a settlement vast stretches of wilderness. The rubber hunters have played a similar part during the last few decades. Rubber dazzled them, as gold and diamonds have dazzled other men and driven them forth to wander through the wide waste spaces of the world. Searching for rubber, they made highways of rivers the very existence of which was unknown to the governmental authorities or to any map makers. Whether they succeeded or failed, they everywhere left behind them settlers, who toiled, married and brought up children. Settlement began. The conquest of the wilderness entered on its first stage. On the 20th we stopped at the first store, where we bought of course at a high price, sugar and tobacco for the camaradas. In this land of plenty the camaradas over ate and sickness was as rife among them as ever. In Sherry's boat he himself and the steersmen were the only men who paddled strongly and continuously. The storekeeper's stock of goods was very low, only what he still had left from that brought in nearly a year before, for the big boats, or batalos-batalons, had not yet worked as far upstream. We expected to meet them somewhere below the next rapids, the inferno. The trader or rubberman brings up his year's supply of goods in a batalo, starting in February and reaching the upper course of the river early in May when the rainy season is over. The parties of rubber explorers are then equipped and provisioned and the settlers purchase certain necessities and certain things that strike them as luxuries. This year the Brazil nut-crap on the river had failed, a serious thing for all explorers and wilderness wanderers. On the 20th we made the longest run we had made, 52 kilometers. Lyra took observations where we camped. We were in latitude 8 degrees 49 minutes. At this camping place the great beautiful river was little over 300 meters wide. We were in an empty house. The marks showed that in the high water a couple of months back the river had risen until the low part of the house was flooded. The difference between the level of the river during the floods and in the dry season is extraordinary. On the 21st we made another good run, getting down to the inferno rapids which are in latitude 8 degrees 19 minutes south. Until we reached the Cardozo we had run almost due north. Since then we had been running a little west of north. Before we reached these rapids we stopped at a large pleasant thatch house and got a fairly big and roomy as well as light boat, leaving both our two smaller dugouts behind. Above the rapids a small river, the Madiranya, entered from the left. The rapids had a fall of over 10 meters and the water was very wild and rough. Met with for the first time it would doubtless have taken several days to explore a passage and with danger and labor get the boats down. But we were no longer exploring, pioneering over unknown country. It is easy to go where other men have prepared the way. We had a guide, we took our baggage down by a carry, three quarters of a kilometer long and the canoes were run through known channels the following morning. At the foot of the rapids was a big house in store and camped at the head were a number of rubber workers waiting for the big boats of the head rubbermen to work their way up from below. They were a reckless set of brown daredevils. These men lead hard lives of labor and peril. They continually face death themselves and they think little of it in connection with others. It is small wonder that they sometimes have difficulties with the tribes of utterly wild Indians with whom they are brought in contact, although there is a strong Indian strain in their own blood. The following morning after the empty canoes had been run down, we started and made a rather short afternoon's journey. We had to take the baggage by one rapids. We camped in an empty house in the rain. Next day we ran nearly 50 kilometers, the river making a long sweep to the west. We met half a dozen batalos making their way upstream, each with a crew of six or eight men and two of them with women and children in addition. The crew were using very long poles with crooks or rather the stubs of cut branches which served as crooks at the upper end. With these they hooked into the branches and dragged themselves up along the bank in addition to polling where the depth permitted. The river was as big as the Paraguay at Karumba, but in striking contrast to the Paraguay there were few water birds. We ran some rather stiff rapids, the Infernino without unloading, in the morning. In the evening we landed for the night at a large open shed-like house, where there were two or three pigs, the first livestock we had seen other than poultry and ducks. It was a dirty place but we got some eggs. The following day, the 24th, we ran down some 50 kilometers to the Karupanan rapids, which by observation Lyra found to be in latitude 7 degrees 47 minutes. We met several batalos and the houses on the bank showed that the settlers were somewhat better off than was the case farther up. At the rapids was a big store, the property of Sr. Caripe, the wealthiest rubberman who works on this river. Many of the men we met were in his employ. He has himself risen from the ranks, he was most kind and hospitable, and gave us another boat to replace the last of our shovel-nosed dugouts. The large open house was cool, clean and comfortable. With these began a series of half a dozen sets of rapids all coming within the next dozen kilometers and all offering very real obstacles. At one we saw the graves of four men who had perished therein, and many more had died whose bodies were never recovered. The toll of human life had been heavy. Had we been still on an unknown river pioneering our own way, it would doubtless have taken us at least a fortnight of labor and peril to pass. But it actually took only a day and a half. All the channels were known, all the trails cut. Sr. Caripe, a first-class waterman, cool, fearless and brawny as a bull, came with us as a guide. Half a dozen times the loads were taken out and carried down. At one cataract the canoes were themselves dragged over land, elsewhere they were run down empty, shipping a good deal of water. At the foot of the cataract where we dragged the canoes over land we camped for the night. Here Kermit shot a big caiman. Our camp was alongside the graves of three men who at this point had perished in the swift water. Sr. Caripe told us many strange adventures of rubber-workers he had met or employed. One of his men, working at the Guiparana, got lost and after twenty-eight days found himself on the Madrenia, which he thus discovered. He was in excellent health for he had means to start a fire, and he found abundance of Brazil nuts and big land tortoises. Sr. Caripe said that the rubber-men now did not go above the ninth degree or their abouts, on the upper Arripuanan proper, having found the rubber poor on the reaches above. A year previously five rubber-men, Mandiruku Indians, were working on the Karumba at about that level. It is a difficult stream to ascend or descend. They made excursions into the forest for days at a time after Kauchup. On one such trip, after fifteen days, they to their surprise came out on the Arripuanan. They returned and told their patron of their discovery, and by his orders took their Kaushu over land to the Arripuanan, build a canoe, and ran down with their Kaushu to Manaus. They had now returned and were working on the upper Arripuanan. The Mundirukus and Brazilians are always on the best terms, and the former are even more inveterate enemies of the wild Indians than are the latter. By mid-four noon on April 26th, we had passed the last dangerous rapids. The paddles were plied with hardy goodwill, cherry and kermit, as usual working like the camaradas, and the canoes went dancing down the broad rapid river. The equatorial forest crowded on either hand to the water's edge, and although the river was falling, it was still so high that in many places little islands were completely submerged, and the current raced among the trunks of the green trees. At one o'clock, we came to the mouth of the Castaño proper, and inside of the tent of Lieutenant Perinius, with the flags of the United States and Brazil flying before it, and with rifles firing from the canoes and the shore, we moored at the landing of the neat, soldierly, well-kept camp. The upper Arripuanan, a river of substantially the same volume as the Castaño, but broader at this point, and probably of less length, here joined the Castaño from the east, and the two together formed with rubbermen called the lower Arripuanan. The mouth of this was indicated and sometimes named on the maps, but only as a small and unimportant stream. We had been two months in the canoes, from the 27th of February to the 26th of April, we had gone over 750 kilometers. The river from its source, near the 13th degree, to where it became navigable and we entered it, had a course of some 200 kilometers, probably more, perhaps 300 kilometers. Therefore, we had now put on the map a river nearly 1,000 kilometers in length, of which the existence was not merely unknown, but impossible if the standard maps were correct. But this was not all. It seemed that this river of 1,000 kilometers in length was really the true upper course of the Arripuanan proper, in which case the total length was nearly 1,500 kilometers. Perinius had been waiting for us over a month at the junction of what the rubbermen called the Castaño and of what they called the upper Arripuanan. He had no idea as to which stream we would appear on or whether we would appear up on either. On March 26th, he had measured the volume of the two and found that the Castaño, although the narrower, was the deeper and swifter and that in volume it surpassed the other by 84 cubic meters a second. Since then the Castaño had fallen, our measurements showed it to be slightly smaller than the other. The volume of the river after the junction was about 4,500 cubic meters a second. This was in seven degrees, 34 minutes. We were glad indeed to see Perinius and be at his attractive camp. We were only four hours above the Little River Hamlet of Sao Yau, a port of call for rubber steamers, from which the larger ones go to Manaus in two days. These steamers mostly belonged to Sr. Caripe. From Perinius we learned that Loriado and Fiala had reached Manaus on March 26th. On the swift water in the Gorge of the Papagayo, Fiala's boat had been upset and all his belongings lost while he himself had narrowly escaped with his life. I was glad indeed that the fine and gallant fellow had escaped. The Canadian canoe had done very well. We were no less rejoiced to learn that Amilcar, the head of the party that went down the Gui Parana, was also all right, although his canoe too had been upset in the rapids and his instruments and all his notes lost. He had reached Manaus on April 10th. Fiala had gone home. Miller was collecting near Manaus. He had been doing capital work. The Paranas were bad here and no one could bathe. Chariah, while standing in the water close to the shore, was attacked and bitten, but with one bound he was on the bank before any damage could be done. We spent a last night under canvas at Perinius' encampment. It rained heavily. Next morning we all gathered at the monument which Colonel Rondon had erected, and he read the orders of the day. These recited just what had been accomplished, set forth the fact that we had now, by actual exploration and investigation, discovered that the river whose upper portion had been called the Duvita on the maps of the Telegraphic Commission and the unknown major part of which we had just traversed, and the river known to a few rubbermen, but no one else, as the Castanho. And the lower part of the river known to the rubbermen is the Arupuanan, which did not appear on the maps save as its mouth was sometimes indicated with no hint of its size, were all parts of one and the same river, and that by order of the Brazilian government this river, the largest affluent of the Madeira, with its source near the 13th degree and its mouth a little south of the 5th degree, hitherto utterly unknown to cartographers and in large part utterly unknown to anyone save the local tribes of Indians, had been named the Rio Roosevelt. We left Rondon, Lyra and Perinius to take observations, and the rest of us embarked for the last time on the canoes, and born swiftly on the rapid current we passed over one set of not very important rapids, and ran down to Senor Caribe's little hamlet of Sao Yol, which we reached about one o'clock on April 27th, just before a heavy afternoon rain set in. We had run nearly 800 kilometers during the 60 days we had spent in the canoes. Here we found and bordered Perinius' river steamer, which seemed in our eyes extremely comfortable. In the Senor's pleasant house we were greeted by the Senora, and they were both more than thoughtful and generous in hospitality. Ahead of us lay merely 36 hours by steamer to Manaus. Such a trip as that we had taken tries man as if by fire. Cherry had more than stood every test, and in him Kermit and I had come to recognize a friend with whom our friendship would never falter or grow less.